740.00119 European War 1939/2017
The Department of State to the Belgian Embassy 49b
Memorandum
Reference is made to the Department’s memorandum of December 21, 1943 concerning the Additional Conditions of the Armistice with Italy signed at Malta on September 29, 1943 and to the exception noted in note D. 8248 No. 5951 dated December 3 from the Belgian Embassy with respect to Article 28, paragraphs B and C of the Additional Conditions of the Italian Armistice.
It is the view of this Government that the Belgian Government has misinterpreted the paragraphs of the Article referred to. The obligations arising from them rest on the Italian Government and not on the Commander-in-Chief or any Allied authority.
The purpose of paragraphs B and C of Article 28 of the Additional Conditions of the Armistice with Italy was to oblige the Italian Government to hold, preserve and protect certain United Nations property and nationals in Italy until the Allied authorities could arrive to deal with them. These particular clauses were intended to safeguard a situation in which the Germans might try to remove the nationals and property of certain United Nations and in which the Italian Government, with which the Armistice had been concluded, would be in a position to prevent the Germans from taking such action. The operative words in each paragraph are “pending further instructions”. Whenever United Nations nationals or property were [Page 402] discovered in the hands of the Italian authorities, the intention was that instructions would be given at once for their release unless special circumstances existed which would make this undesirable.
The State Department therefore concludes that the suggestion that the Allied Commander-in-Chief might feel under an obligation to impose hardships upon certain United Nations nationals in Italy is not borne out by the texts of the paragraphs under reference.
- A similar note to the Netherlands Ambassador dated February 22, 1944, not printed.↩